You are now punishing the colonies for acting on distinctions held out by that very ministry which is here shining in riches, in favor, and in power, and urging the punishment of the very offence to which they had themselves been the tempters.
Burke points out the hypocrisy of punishing the colonies for actions encouraged by the British ministry.
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More from Edmund Burke
The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
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